Michaela Bronstein

Candidate statement

Associate Professor, English Department, Johns Hopkins University

MSA is my intellectual home: I’ve been to almost every meeting since 2009. As a scholar of modernism who also works on literatures from times and places far afield from the early 20th century, I am firmly invested in an expansively open MSA, and in maintaining the conference’s status as a space that values the presence of those for whom “modernist studies” isn’t the primary descriptor of their work. I’ve both participated in and organized numerous panels and roundtables, including meta-disciplinary events that address broad questions about the field’s capacities and limits today.

As an administrator, I like to figure out how to make valued institutions work a little better for everyone. MSA already exemplifies the results of many people doing this kind of labor, such as the recent expansions in support and mentorship for graduate, contingent, and non-faculty scholars. These initiatives both ensure broader access at our in-person conference and build forms of ongoing dialogue between conferences that benefit everyone. On the Board, I would work to ensure that MSA’s institutions provide for our community’s many needs, whether via logistical creativity, material support, or new scholarly conversations. Department Website